Honors 100
Assignment 1:
When I learned I was accepted into the honors program at UW,
I felt two very distinct emotions: joy and relief. I was happy to have been
accepted into this prestigious program, to have access to more challenging and
interesting classes and numerous helpful advisors. However, at the same time, I
felt a great deal of relief, because I felt that me being accepted into the
honors program was proof that I had been successful in my past activities and
choices. For better or worse, I was someone who is constantly pushing myself to
succeed in what I do: I’d always try to take the most advanced class, get the
highest grade, take part in the most programs, and in general exceed. It took
me quite a while to finally realize how dangerous such a perfectionistic
lifestyle was, and how damaging to my health so much stress was, and in high
school I slowly began to take a less strenuous path in my education. Even then,
I never lost my ideal of challenging myself in order to learn more about the
world and myself: this is due to my ideal of having a deep responsibility, as
someone who was fortunate enough to be able to one day go do college and
beyond, to learn as much as I could and achieve my full potential. I graduated
with an IB diploma, worked with MUN from a simple delegate all the way to a
committee chair, dedicated great time to my studies, and continued my volunteer
work that culminated in a month long overseas volunteer trip to rural china.
The only difference now was that, instead of pushing myself solely to acquire the
immaterial high grades I once stressed greatly over, I worked and studied to
further my own personal understanding of the universe, refine my morals,
ethics, and ideology, establish my goal of becoming a doctor, and, most
importantly of all, begin to reveal the truth about my long-living ideal of
becoming a world citizen. That is what I’m looking for in the Honors program:
for as much as I have learned through my work up until now, I am still woefully
ignorant about the world, morality, and myself. I am only 18 years old, hardly
at the start of my life, and there is still so much I have yet to see. The
University of Washington and its honors program can help me truly begin my path
to acquiring understanding, and I will take full advantage of my time here to
gain knowledge that will serve me for the rest of my life. It will be
challenging, but I am confident my past experiences have prepared me for it. I
want to learn the things that normally wouldn’t be necessary for a doctor: I
will get enough of biology and the other sciences as I start to study in
medical school, but right now I want to learn of history, philosophy,
anthropology, and cosmology. This coming 4 years are a once in a lifetime
chance to learn what I want to learn, before specializing into medicine, and I
will be sure to learn as much as I can.
Of course, I entered college not knowing everything, and I doubt I will
know everything by the time I leave.
This is just an early step in a lifetime of new understanding and
experiences: I want to go to medical school, work overseas with an organization
like Doctors Without Borders, find a place as a doctor here in the US, and
through it all continue my pursuit of understanding. It fills me with
unbelievable excitement when I think of what is to come, and I hope that the
program will help me get there.
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